Free Republic

The most remarkable thing happened in Washington this past Tuesday. Congress scrapped the F-22 stealth fighter jet, killing off a 30-year-old Pentagon hardware program that employs 25,000 people in 46 states. It was a dogfight almost to the end over $1.75 billion and the need to remake military readiness. Threats and promises, blunt talk and grand gestures -- all were deployed to support an appeal to common sense and for urgent change, according to principals involved. The White House coordinated the ultimately successful vote-wrangling, and its specific tactics may show up again in another epic battle now unfolding: getting Congress...

Kopel: Paper blowing scientific smokePost's coverage of possible smoking ban in Fort Collins comes up short on 'facts'June 30, 2002As Fort Collins considers banning smoking in restaurants and all other public indoor places, The Denver Post's Northern Colorado Bureau did a good job interviewing Fort Collins residents on all sides of the issue: smokers, anti-smokers and property owners (June 16). But the Post's coverage of the science regarding secondhand smoke was a litany of misinformation. Making several serious errors in a single sentence, the Post asserted: "The Environmental Protection Agency classifies secondhand smoke as a cancer-causing substance with no safe...